MENTOR OF TROUBLED STUDENTS WAY AHEAD OF LIFE’S LEARNING CURVE

Hannah Van De Car could have chosen a simpler career, perhaps quantum physics. Instead, she went for one far more complex and frustrating: Hannah’s chosen career is to change lives. There’s no provable equation for that undertaking.

Hannah, a 22-year-old University of San Diego alumnus, is already a veteran of trying to straighten the dead-end turns that some youngsters have taken. She started while still an undergrad and has worked at it for three years. She was first a mentor and now is a program coordinator for TKF, a San Diego nonprofit that aims to reduce youth violence by working one-on-one with troubled students. Referrals normally come from teachers or school counselors.

When Hannah was solely mentoring, her caseload was 20 middle-school girls. She still keeps track of several of them.

Hannah is from Hawaii and grew up in a comfortable home with a lawyer mother and a judge father. It was her father whose example motivated her. “He was always helping people, serving people in need. I wanted to do the work I do because I first watched him do it.”

The troubled demographic that Hannah works with is almost exclusively in the minority communities of south-central San Diego. That’s a sad fact that causes endless head-scratching for sociologists.

To the kids Hannah works with, a person of her background might as well have come from a different planet. However, “As long as you show that you truly care and will listen to them, they accept you. I think it’s more valuable if you’ve been where they’re at, but that’s not me, so I just try to understand and listen.”

Nothing can prepare an inexperienced young person for being thrown into such a cold pool. Asked about the saddest lesson she has learned, Hannah thinks, and then sighs. “You can do everything in your power. You can show up, you can pick them up, you can tutor them after school, you can feed them every night. But at the end of the day when they go home and their sister is smoking a joint or their brother-in-law is walking in with a gun in his hand, it doesn’t much matter what you do. That’s the reality.”

Hannah’s thoughts turn to one that got away. “I had one girl, I never worked harder with any student trying to get her on the right track. She was in eighth grade, and her main goal was just to finish high school. She was from a screwed-up family. When she came to this country from Mexico, her mom was a prostitute. Just a crazy life.

“When I first met her at age 13, she was halfway between being a good kid and really screwed up. She was never on time for school because her mom wouldn’t wake up in time to drive her. Sometimes I would drive her home, and no one would be there. Her mom would be out partying or doing whatever she was doing. At that time, [the girl] was smoking weed and drinking.